Sketches for Ethnographic Experimentation

The forum “Vocabulary for Ethnographic Experimentation”, on the website of the Society for Cultural Anthropology and coordinated by Adolfo Estalella, Tomás Criado, and Francisco Martínez, brings together thought-provoking contributions in which various Spanish-speaking authors sketch what could be understood as initial, open, and evolving outlines for contemporary ethnographic experimentation.

From the outset, the forum coordinators clarify that ethnographic experimentation is conceived "as the design of situations, devices, and collaborations that reshape our relationships with the empirical and the analytical through prototyping, material mediations, and performative modes of inquiry”. The experimentation is based on the premise that the ethnographic encounter does not have a preconceived form, but can—and should—be designed in multiple ways.

Anthropology, the coordinators remind us, has historically been a discipline that has conceived its knowledge production primarily in observational terms. Along these lines, experimentation invites us to reconfigure the ways in which we relate to our interlocutors and to the world we observe in the field, while opening up the possibility of trying out other modes of theoretical elaboration and ethnographic writing. For example, contributions such as that of Isaac Marrero-Guillamón reorient experimentation toward the “co-production” of knowledge, emphasizing practices such as co-writing or staging. His proposal to create speculative fictions or co-fabulation exercises shifts so-called “informants” from the position of “objects of study” to that of “subjects of enunciation”, capable of producing their own narratives and actively intervening in the construction of ethnographic knowledge.

Ethnographic experimentation challenges institutionalized forms and norms of discipline. Roger Canals points out that anthropological research is often described as a linear process consisting of four successive stages: “(1) the formulation of research questions or working hypotheses; (2) ethnographic fieldwork, based on data collection; (3) analysis of this data based on initial hypotheses and a selection of existing theoretical models; and (4) writing and publishing the research results in books and articles through specialized channels”. However, Canals warns that ethnographic projects rarely follow this orderly sequence. In response, he proposes thinking of experimentation as a way of destabilizing this scheme and recognizing the non-linear and changing nature of anthropological work.

Developing his argument, Canals also questions the centrality of the “ethnographic book” as the preferred format for presenting research results. Instead, he proposes an ethnographic practice oriented toward what he calls an “eclectic assemblage”: a constellation of heterogeneous results, produced at different moments in the research process and aimed at diverse audiences. Within this framework, Canals presents the “ethnographic sketch” (boceto etnográfico) as a possible format: an incomplete, provisional, and speculative text that functions as a space for experimentation, transparency, and creative freedom. Following this same logic, Santiago Orrego identifies in the “ethnographic zine”—inspired by the fanzine format—a way to produce knowledge from the fragmentary, the unfinished, and the personal, displacing the centrality of the closed and definitive work.

Ethnographic experimentation involves “doing things differently” when it comes to “making relations and rethinking how we relate to the world” (Francisco Martínez). It also entails reflection on how we imagine the world and render it sensible. Mariana Rivera proposes an alternative way of understanding this anthropological imagination by conceiving ethnography in terms of “evocation” rather than “representation”. According to her argument, while representation presupposes a hierarchical distance between the one who represents and the one who is represented, evocation seeks to generate a shared sensory and affective space, shifting the emphasis from the final product to the relational and dialogical process entailed in the ethnographic encounter.

As Roger Sansi argues, ethnographic experimentation projects “will be collaborative or they will not be”. “Experimental collaboration” implies an inventive and open relationship, in which the researcher engages with actors who possess diverse knowledge, skills, and forms of agency. This relationship blurs the boundary between the researcher and the researched, in what Sansi describes as an attempt to “dilute anthropology into life”. In this dialogical exercise, the central act of fieldwork ceases to be documentation or interpretation, becoming not only evocation—as Mariana Rivera would say—but also an exercise in “making doubt”, where uncertainty constitutes the foundation for ethnographic collaboration (Farías, Marlow, and Wall).

The diversity of arrangements that emerge from these experimental practices leads Adolfo Estalella and Tomás Criado to argue that it is difficult to establish a single “method” for ethnographic experimentation. Each experience is unique, situated, and responds to the specific conditions of the fieldwork. Instead of a generalizable protocol, they propose “inventorying”. In this framework, they present the project xcol. An Ethnographic Inventory as a repository of experiences that, rather than offering replicable designs, functions as a source of inspiration for imagining new forms of ethnographic experimentation.

In line with the articles that make up the forum, the Reassembling Anthropology Project seeks to identify forms of experimentation that emerge not so much from deliberately designed methodological innovation, but rather from necessity, precariousness, and the material conditions that permeate research in academic peripheries. These are practices that often remain invisible, but which constitute the core of many ethnographic trajectories in the Global South. These are modes of experimentation that do not arise from creative imperatives, but rather from the urgency to sustain intellectual work in contexts marked by scarcity. In this sense, the initial interviews with Pavél Aguilar and Ginno Martínez—featured in the Conversations section of the project’s website—shed light on some of the dynamics emerging on this experimental horizon. Through their testimonies, they show how some Peruvian anthropologists convert their own work and professional experiences (outside academia) into valuable analytical and ethnographic inputs as a way of managing resources and time in the face of academic precariousness for research.

These testimonies reveal forms of experimentation—which we might call “subterranean experimentation”, insofar as they emerge from the margins and tend to remain hidden in the final research outputs—that involve a reinvention of ethnographic practice. In them, the position of the “field researcher” becomes intertwined with prior professional trajectories and positionalities, giving rise to new analytical sensibilities and different ways of relating to interlocutors. At the same time, these experiences challenge the linearity of the research process as described by Canals, since in many cases the core of the field experience precedes the explicit formulation of research questions. In others, initial analysis takes place in non-academic spaces and formats—such as technical reports or consultancy documents—that are later articulated with more conventional formats of ethnographic production, thus forming an “eclectic assemblage” of knowledges, temporalities, and registers.

As Candela Morado and Isabel Gutiérrez point out, all ethnographic experimentation involves ethical innovation. It is not only a matter of transforming the modes of knowledge production, but also of rethinking the relationships, responsibilities, and commitments that are woven between those who participate in the research process. In particular, the subterranean experimentation that emerges in contexts of academic precariousness forces us to question the institutional ethical frameworks that usually regulate research, opening up the possibility of imagining more situated, reflexive, and critical ways of doing anthropology from the South.

Luis Meléndez

References

Estalella, Adolfo, Tomás Criado, and Francisco Martínez (2025). "Vocabulario para la experimentación etnográfica." Theorizing the Contemporary, Fieldsights, October 23. https://www.culanth.org/fieldsights/series/vocabulario-para-la-experimentacion-etnografica